Electromagnetic Duality and the Electric Memory Effect
Abstract
We study large gauge transformations for soft photons in quantum electrodynamics which, together with the helicity operator, form an ISO(2) algebra. We show that the two non-compact generators of the ISO(2) algebra correspond respectively to the residual gauge symmetry and its electromagnetic dual gauge symmetry that emerge at null infinity. The former is helicity universal (electric in nature) while the latter is helicity distinguishing (magnetic in nature). Thus, the conventional large gauge transformation is electric in nature, and is naturally associated with a scalar potential. We suggest that the electric Aharonov-Bohm effect is a direct measure for the electromagnetic memory arising from large gauge transformations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1711.09968,
title = {Electromagnetic Duality and the Electric Memory Effect},
author = {Yuta Hamada and Min-Seok Seo and Gary Shiu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.09968},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
16 pages, 1 figure, version to appear in JHEP